


Sure of You

by anotherdashwood



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: An absolutely appalling amount of hand waving at any sort of timeline, An overuse of sincerity, Board Games, But also a bit of trolling, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Discussion of a panic attack, Domestic, Established Relationship, Feelings about a Robyn song, Found Family, Friendship, Introspection, M/M, Queer Themes, Song Lyrics, The briefest possible mention of drug taking, There's no way Cabaret rehearsed for as long as I'm pretending it did, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22464031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherdashwood/pseuds/anotherdashwood
Summary: "I think I really need to make a friend who is... someone who is like me.”“A business major with an incomprehensible love of cheap polycotton and terrible belts?”Patrick snorted. “Someone who hasn't spent the past couple of decades entirely aware of their sexuality.”“Sure, sure. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”Or, Patrick decides it's about time he makes some new friends.---UPDATE: Now with PART TWO - A WEDDINGPatrick has made some new friends. Now he gets to hang out with them.---T/W: Very vague mention of the death by suicide of a character not actually in the story. A character discusses a previous panic attack, but everything is very much okay.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer & Original Character, Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 173
Kudos: 418





	1. A Games Night

**Author's Note:**

> I have never written a fic before, for any fandom, but I couldn't get this out of my head. Inspired by the very real hours I spent Googling "Queer [insert small town I live in here]".  
> I adore these two stupid boys.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Patrick began, letting out the breath it felt that he’d been holding all month. Suddenly, in the relief of finally having this conversation, he realised he hadn’t quite planned what to say next. The store was silent for a moment, and Patrick looked over to where David was restocking the (annoyingly popular) body milk, suddenly noticing his boyfriend’s shoulders and back, tensed in anticipation of what was coming.

“Sorry,” he continued, bracing his hands on the counter, “I should have realised how that sounded. It’s nothing you should be worrying about, I promise.”

David turned to look over his shoulder, his eyebrows inching towards his hairline, and gestured helplessly with his entire upper body. “Well?” he urged.

“I know I said I don’t feel the need to date anyone else right now, and I meant that,” Patrick said, his voice raised slightly, rushing in his haste to reassure his boyfriend. “But, look, I know I really didn’t want to sleep with Ken, and I spent most of the date thinking about getting back to tell you that, but there were parts of it that were… good.”

David nodded, his eyes closed, hands pressed against his mouth, as if he’d been expecting this all month.

“You think you want to try it with someone else?”

Patrick struggled to restrict his eye roll to an internal one.

“David! Come on. Stop trying to anticipate what I’m saying here. I meant what I said. I don’t want to date anyone else.”

“Well, tell me what you mean then!”

Patrick could almost taste the anxiety in David’s voice.

“I liked spending time with… it’s… I don’t have any queer friends,” Patrick finally landed on. “I love you, and I love how much time I get to spend with you. But you’re the only queer person in my life.” David’s mouth opened, and Patrick cut him off, reading what was about to come out of it. “Ronnie doesn’t count, David. She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She’ll get over the…” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the bathroom as he wandered towards the front of the store, and then looked back at Patrick’s incredulous expression, shrugging. “Alright, maybe she won’t.”

“It’s been a busy year,” Patrick was on a roll now, the thoughts that had been bouncing around in his head rearranging themselves in a useful order, “a really big year, in every possible way, and I have loved spending it with you. With Stevie too. And your family. But I… I used to have friends. Before I moved here. A lot of friends.”

Patrick looked down, eyes on his knuckles, now white where they were gripped against the edge of the counter. He took a steadying breath, and then felt David step up behind him. The familiar hand on his hip grounded him, and he felt David’s lips press into his shoulder. Patrick let out a breath.

“I think I’m lonely, David,” he leant back, his head dropping back onto the shoulder so conveniently situated behind him, and then allowed everything he’d been feeling to come out in a mess, “I don’t miss my old life. I’m not regretting anything. I don’t ever want to go back. There was so much I wasn’t telling those friends anyway. I wasn’t letting anyone know me. I didn’t know myself, really. But I do miss spending time with other people. More than just other people, actually, I think I really need to make a friend who is... someone who is like me.”

“A business major with an incomprehensible love of cheap polycotton and terrible belts?”

Patrick snorted. “Someone who hasn't spent the past couple of decades entirely aware of their sexuality.”

“Sure, sure. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”

Patrick heard the smile that he was sure was twisting his boyfriend’s beautiful mouth as David began to speak. “I mean I can’t pretend to understand. I would be happy to never have to spend too much of my time with anyone but you,” he said, and Patrick laughed. He started to reply, but David acknowledged the note before he could make it, “and maybe Stevie, I guess. But I appreciate that my delightfully introverted tendencies may mean that you are spending more evenings than you would like in only my dazzling company.”

Patrick turned, pressing his lips to David’s neck, and wrapped his arms around his waist.

“That’s not what I said. I love every minute I spend with you. It’s never enough. And I love it when it’s just us. You know I do.”

“Oh, I know,” David preened, looking confident again now. “In fact, you could show me just how much, if you like?”

Patrick was frustrated to feel himself blushing, unable to believe that after all this time with David, an only vaguely suggestive comment could cause him to turn pink. His eyes flicked to David’s mouth.

David grinned, wolfishly, knowing exactly what he wanted, and leant down to capture Patrick’s lips. That was why he still blushed, Patrick thought. He would never get enough of this. They’d kissed thousands of times. There had been whole evenings when they’d done little else. Hours where they’d barely stopped to draw breath. An entire weekend in a motel in Elmdale when they hadn’t left the king-sized bed. And yet this: David’s plump bottom lip caught between his, a slight nip of teeth that was right on the edge of what they had agreed was appropriate in the front of the store. This still drove him mad. It had never been like this with anyone else. Could never be like this with anyone else. David opened his mouth wider, deepening the kiss, and pulled Patrick closer. Patrick heard himself moan slightly, and ran his hands up David’s chest before gently pushing him backwards and shaking his head ruefully.

“But I think I need to put myself out there and try to make some new friends.”

“What about playing the baseball and your Cabaret rehearsals?” David asked, his hands still running over Patrick’s torso, smoothing down his back and halting once his fingertips dipped into Patrick’s waistband.

“David,” Patrick held onto his forearms to prevent David’s hands from slipping further south and laughed at the annoyed pout that formed on his face. “Come on. You know we can’t. It’s barely three o’clock. Look, I think I need a friend I want to spend time with. Someone to talk to, not just people I’m on the team or rehearsing with. Does that make sense?”

“Not even a little bit,” David said, but he was smiling as he removed his hands from Patrick’s body and stepped back. Patrick’s heart swelled and he missed the contact immediately.

“Honestly, I’m not quite sure how I go about making brand new friends as an adult, but I need to try.”

“Well, that all sounds very intense, so I am going to leave that with you. But I will help by bringing you a tea,” David spoke with a magnanimous air, but Patrick wasn’t fooled. He watched David walk away, tight black jeans hugging his thighs, and found himself desperately regretting the decision not to close the store for an hour, move them both behind the curtain, and take David apart piece by piece.

“And by getting yourself one of those strawberry ice-creams Twyla has in stock?” he threw over his shoulder, and then turned and steadied himself against the counter.

“If the mood should take me, I may perhaps also pick up some ice-cream,” David allowed, leaning over the opposite side of the counter and lowering his voice, “but only because you, despite how quiet things generally are until four on Tuesdays, seem to be against the idea of us moving things into the store room for a bit.”

Patrick clenched his jaw, and ran a hand over his mouth, his grip on his self-control tenuous.

“I’ll make it up to you tonight?”

David looked up through his lashes at Patrick, his eyes dark.

“You will, yes.”

“Looking forward to it,” he promised, as David turned to leave.

“David,” Patrick added, and watched his boyfriend pause with his hand on the door. “Just me and Stevie? Don’t try and pretend you wouldn’t miss Alexis.”

David scoffed, pulled on the door, and walked through it without looking back. Patrick leant forward onto the counter and chuckled as he heard him muttering on his way out.

“No. No, thank you. Absolutely not.”

\---

It was later that week, as David was occupied with his inexplicably lengthy Thursday night routine (something to do with a mask that he still wouldn’t let Patrick see), that Patrick found himself on Google. He hesitated over the search bar, playing around with search terms in his head.

Local queer… stuff? Queer Elmdale. Queer meeting. Schitt’s Creek Queer. Queer meet-up. Queer guys Elm Valley.

Fuck.

He exhaled in frustration, and settled on LGBTQ+ Elmdale, reasoning that if there were something he could get involved in in Schitt’s Creek, he’d already know about it. He was already as involved in whatever the Schitt’s Creek ‘queer scene’ was as he really wanted to be – if there were things happening that he wasn’t aware of, he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with the likelihood of Jake using them as a pick-up venue.

It wasn’t rare, that palpable rush of relief and gratitude he felt when he thought about how lucky he’d been that David had walked into Ray’s that day, but he found himself lost for a moment in the alternative. In the sans-Roses version of Schitt’s Creek. The version where he didn’t know what to Google, didn’t know how to label how he felt. Where he started visiting the Dude Cave every week, downing whisky, and maybe eventually got drunk enough to kiss a man, literally any man, out of sheer desperation for not having done it. Where he appreciated the aesthetic of ‘open minded’ Jake from a distance, while Jake dated Stevie and whoever else he fancied. Where he admired Ted’s nice shoulders when he bumped into him in the café. Where he quietly, miserably, returned to his old life when Rachel arrived to drag him back to it. He liked to imagine, occasionally, that he wouldn’t have gone. That that six months would have changed him, David or no David. He does try to offer himself the benefit of the doubt, but he’s also nothing if not brutally honest, at least in his own head. He would have been lonely. It would have been so much harder to tell her “no” without thinking, hoping, that David would forgive him and be there. Without knowing what right felt like and why it felt so hopelessly wrong with her. He doesn’t think he would have told her.

Hell, he still hasn’t told his parents. He could call them now; he still has twenty-three minutes before David comes out of the bathroom. He could call them, and tell them, and then they’d know.

He’s not going to tell his parents. Not tonight. Face to face, that’s the deal. Face to face, so he can show them, so they can see how happy he is. Happier than he’s ever been. What’s another couple of months? He’ll go before Christmas this year, he really will.

So. Elmdale LGBTQ+ then. His search threw up a range of options: a Facebook group for ‘Elm Valley Lesbians and Gays’ (not very inclusive, he couldn’t help thinking), an article about a town counselor speaking on LGBTQ+ inclusivity, an Elmdale Pride picnic that seemed to run in May each year (and which he’d just missed), and a Queer Elmdale games night that looked like it happened every fortnight or so in a bar.

Bingo. He clicked onto their Facebook page – careful not to like it, his parents were on Facebook – and noted down the details. By the time David came out of the bathroom, glowing and beautiful as ever, he had a plan.

But first, he thought, as David climbed beneath the sheets and waggled his eyebrows suggestively, he had something far more important to attend to. One day he’d find a way to tell David just how grateful he was. Quite how extraordinarily lucky he felt. Just how terrifyingly close he had been to missing out on this; how close to settling for something that was just… enough, and how it would never have been enough. But it still felt too vulnerable. Too much to put on David’s shoulders: to convey how deeply his happiness, his sense of self, the life he had carved out, was tied up in the man in front of him.

And, in the meantime, he could show him.

Patrick leaned over and kissed David beneath his jaw, stubble grazing his lips, just at the edge of his still slightly sticky nightly moisturiser. He made his way achingly slowly down his body, divesting his boyfriend of nightclothes as he went, before finally, finally taking him in his mouth. David sighed happily and contentedly above him, his breath hitching when Patrick took him deeper, his fingers tracing gently along the back of Patrick’s hairline.

\---

“So, just to be clear about what’s happening tonight, you’re going to attend a Games Night, a Games Night, in Elmdale, with a bunch of cute queer guys, and I’m not invited?”

Patrick rolled his eyes, exasperated at the return to a conversation they’d been having on and off for the past week. He looked up from the online orders spreadsheet, at David, who had perched on the edge of their desk in the back room.

“David, I just think if you come too, it’ll be harder for me to meet new people. I’m not saying I don’t want you there, I’m just… no, hold on. I don’t want you there. I’m saying I don’t want you there.”

David’s eyebrows shot up.

“Well this isn’t sending me into a panic at all.”

“I’m not going there to pick up guys! I told you I’m not interested in that. I’m just aware of how…” he paused, trying to find the right word, “…distracted I am by you. Look, I don’t know how to say this without it sounding ridiculous but, if you’re there, I don’t really think I’ll see anyone else.”

There was silence as his words landed, and Patrick stood, pushing the desk chair in, and stepping between David’s open legs.

“Well, that is a very lovely thing to hear,” David suppressed a smile, preening as he pressed his lips together, his dimples giving away everything he was feeling.

Patrick leant forward, tucking his head into David’s shoulder, his lips hovering at his neck.

“I mean it. I need to do this for me. And if you’re there, I’ll spend all night sitting next to you, or watching you across the room. I’m going to go, play an overly competitive round of Ticket to Ride, talk to some strangers, and come home.”

He felt David nod.

“There is nothing, and I really mean this, nothing you need to worry about.”

“I know. I know. I just… I kind of wish you were joining a queer bowling league or something instead?”

Patrick pushed against David, and leant back, looking incredulously into his face.

“Oh, so what you’re really jealous about here is the Games Night aspect of this.”

David looked suddenly defensive, his hands working hard as he explained.

“Look, all I am saying is that I have been trying to get a Games Night started here for, like, three years now. You know, just six of us, the good Elmdale pizza, a couple of bottles of wine, once a month or so. A rotating series of board games. I don’t know. I’ve not really thought about it.”

“OK, David,” Patrick laughed, and kissed him, mouth still stretched in a grin. David kissed back, now grinning himself, before pulling back.

“Alright, but, maybe if you do meet someone you like, we could make it a thing? Get Stevie, and Alexis and Ted, I guess, and then someone else? We’d obviously need six for optimal game play.”

“OK, David,” Patrick repeated, shaking his head, unable to keep the sheer affection from his face.

\---

“So, what’s your story?”

“My story?” Patrick replied, feeling like he’d missed the beginning of a conversation.

He had arrived early for Games Night, walking in just before the sharply dressed guy with gorgeous curly hair who showed up with a pile of various editions of Ticket to Ride and a clipboard. He watched people trickle in, greet each other with hugs, pick up drinks from the bar, and gather around the clipboard guy. He felt oddly nervous, unable to shake the feeling that standing up and making it clear that he was here for the Games Night meant something. Something that felt like a step into a new world. Everyone in Schitt’s Creek knowing he was dating David was one thing. But being here, writing his name down on a piece of paper headed LGBTQ+ Night, suddenly felt like a bigger deal than he wanted it to be.

Just before seven thirty, he gave himself a mental kick up the ass, imagined returning home to David and telling him he’d spent the evening hovering in a corner, and added his name and email address to the sign up sheet. Groups formed quickly, people fought over the best versions of the game, and he found himself standing beside a tiny woman with a gorgeous afro, dark purple lipstick, and a friendly smile. She introduced herself as Ashanti, and dragged him towards the bar while their two competitors got the board ready. She’d opened with the the story question, and was grinning expectantly at him.

“Yeah! Everyone comes with a story. Like, I moved to Elmdale from Vancouver after college, chasing this guy, who ended up leaving me after he got a job in New York. Turns out jumping cities was kind of his thing, and it really wasn’t mine. I had finally found this job I loved, in the art college, and so I stayed. Thank god I did, because I met Jess.” Ashanti gestured across the room, at a beautiful redhead in a soft cream jumper, who was laughing with a tall guy who had thick-rimmed glasses and a lip ring. “We’ve been together five years now.”

“Oh, wow, that’s lovely.”

“Anyway, I just think, if you come along to a queer night in Elmdale, you’ve probably got a story. We all have a story.”

Patrick grinned, warmth spreading through his chest at the ‘we’; at the ease with which this brilliant, striking, queer girl saw him, in his blue button-up, and thought ‘we’.

“Well, yeah. I guess I do have a story. I grew up in a small town near Sandy Lake. I went away for college, but I ended up back home again afterwards, and just kept falling back into a relationship with this girl, this woman, who I had been at school with.” He took a breath, suddenly painfully aware that he hadn’t told the story like this, all in a rush, before. Not even to David. After the barbeque that nearly derailed everything they had discussed bits and pieces, but had seemed to come to a silent agreement that it was a story that didn’t need telling in detail. He had no idea why he was telling it now. Ashanti turned more fully towards him and gave a small, encouraging nod, and something about her easy smile propelled him forward.

“I proposed to her, and we were planning our wedding and then, one night, I had a drink with a friend. He was talking about his wife, and I can’t even pinpoint what it was, but I realised I didn’t feel that way about Rachel. Had never felt that way about anyone. I didn’t love her right, I guess. Not like she deserved.”

Ashanti cocked her head sympathetically, and reached out to give Patrick a reassuring squeeze on his arm, just above his elbow. He looked down, embarrassed to find his eyes prickling, and took a steadying breath.

“Anyway, I ended it, the relationship, and quit my job and just… ran. I was feeling so sick and panicked about the thought of us getting married, and suddenly I was in my car with a bunch of boxes, no idea where I was going, and I felt lighter and freer than I had in years.”

The bartender turned in their direction. Ashanti ordered three beers from a local Elmdale brewery, and gestured at Patrick, who added a fourth. Ashanti tapped her card, and Patrick started back in the direction of their game.

“Hold on,” Ashanti grasped his arm, “I have a sense that that is definitely not the end of the story.”

He huffed out a laugh, and shook his head, and she gestured to a high table with a couple of stools, throwing a casual “Five minutes, yeah?” in the direction of the others who were sitting around their board.

“It doesn’t matter, we can talk later,” he protested.

“Nope,” she said. “I want to hear the end of the story. I want to hear the bit that ends with: and then I showed up to this queer night in Elmdale.”

“Alright,” Patrick laughed, truly grateful that she seemed to understand that it was tremendously important for him to finish the story. She waved her hand dismissively, gesturing for him to continue.

“I slept in my car the first night. I had no plan. I had never had no plan before. But the next day, I happened across this job advertisement online, in this place called Schitt’s Creek, and I thought that sounded about right. So I called Ray, the guy who had put the ad up, and I had a bed and a job an hour later.”

“Wow, this is quite a story. So, is that what you do now?”

“Well, actually, about a month later Ray had a client who needed a business license. He came in and was so impossibly vague about his business,” Patrick shook his head at the memory, “but he was also the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. It should have been so frustrating, watching him stumble through a bunch of buzzwords, but I just felt completely… charmed. Completely charmed by him. And it’s not like I’d never thought about it before, never tried to figure it out, didn’t have the reality forming in my head at that point, but I realised, suddenly, why it hadn’t felt right with Rachel.”

She nodded, knowingly, and grinned at him. “I like where this is going.”

He grinned back. “Anyway, he called later that day and told my voicemail inbox all about his business. It was a great idea. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and the business, and so I offered to help him get more start-up money. That was more than a year ago now. The guy, David, well, he’s… he’s the love of my life. We’re together. I run the store with him now.”

Ashanti was laughing, pure vicarious joy written across her face. “Patrick, man, that is a great story. Best one I’ve heard in ages.” She clasped her hands together. “I told you! We all have a story! Right, we should go back. They’re waiting for us. But as soon as I’ve whipped your ass, I want to hear all about your guy.”

\---

The store was only open for a half day on Sundays, and so Sunday afternoons were generally spent in Patrick’s apartment. Sunday evenings he and David saw the Roses for dinner, or would head out to the drive in, or shared a pizza and a bottle of wine (and a joint, on occasion) at Stevie’s. But on Sunday afternoons, once they’d cashed up, and cleaned the store, and everything was ready for opening on Monday, they went back to Patrick’s place and took their time with each other. It was Patrick’s favourite part of the week.

Sex with Rachel had always been fine. It had occasionally been good. It had very occasionally been truly great – he had loved her, and felt comfortable with her, and had enjoyed her company. Those times when it had been great were the ones he focused on, and it was easy to put the other times down to being busy, or stressed, or exhausted. No one’s sex life was blissful and extraordinary every day; he reasoned that you’d never get anything else done if it were.

The thing was, though, that sex with David was extraordinary. It was seismic and life changing and, after a year, was somehow still getting even better. All the sex they had had – working his hand into David’s impossible pants in the backseat of Patrick’s car; the two of them pressing against each other, hard and desperate, behind the curtain in the store in the first weeks of their relationship; the night that Patrick had fucked David against the connecting door in the motel, while the Roses were at the cafe; David dropping to his knees in Ray’s tiny shower and sucking Patrick down into his throat; the first time David had worked his cock slowly, carefully into Patrick’s ass – all the infinite ways in which their bodies fit together, had been mind-altering.

Things had shifted once they had space, and time. Patrick had assumed that those early days, the excitement at every new discovery, the inability to keep their hands off each other, would give way to a more comfortable, low-key, domestic time together. It hadn’t proved true yet.

The Sunday following the first Games Night, David suggested a new plan. After a morning of passing slightly too closely to Patrick, of running a hand slightly too low along his back, of tracing his teeth down the shell of Patrick’s ear when there was no one in the store, Patrick was almost too keyed up to cash out. Once home, David tied him to the bed they had chosen together, and edged him again and again until Patrick was crying, overwhelmed and so helplessly and utterly turned on that he could barely breathe. Eventually, finally, after he came so hard he couldn’t stop shaking, David helped him into the bathroom, and into a hot bath. He lay in the water, feeling his body come slowly back to earth.

“You still with me?” David’s gentlest, quietest voice worked its way into him.

“Mmhmm” Patrick mumbled.

“You were perfect, honey. Perfect.”

Patrick felt himself smile, and forced his eyes open. David was sitting on the bathroom floor, wrapped in his bathrobe, his back against the tiles that ran up the wall next to the bath. He had lit a couple of candles, leaving the harsh overhead light off, and the glow in the bathroom was flickering across David’s face. He looked gorgeous and ethereal. Patrick thought, for the thousandth time, that he had never seen his boyfriend look more beautiful.

“I love you David,” he mumbled, and watched the smile reshape David’s face.

“Love you too. You ok?”

“So, so good. I don’t know how to tell you how good.”

“I kind of had that impression, I have to say. You were…” he trailed off.

“Loud?” Patrick offered.

David laughed. “Sure, loud. But also… I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you let go that completely before. You’re always still a little bit in control. But, I don’t know. That didn’t seem true today.”

Feeling his cheeks and chest flush, and hoping he could blame it on the hot water, Patrick nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it felt different today. Like I was totally…” He searched for the word, and David looked patiently on.

“Free.” Patrick landed on, and he felt suddenly choked up, desperate to put it into words. “I felt free. Like you had me, and that I could just give in to it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite like that before.”

David’s eyes looked glassy and he nodded quickly a couple of times, tipping his head back and raising both hands to his mouth to hide his smile.

His voice sounded wet and thick when he finally spoke. “That’s, I mean. That’s just so good, Patrick. I’m so happy you did. It was so, so beautiful to watch. Thank you for letting me see it.”

They sat together, in comfortable easy silence, until Patrick started to nod off in the bath, and David decided it was safer to move them both to bed. Later, with David curled around his back, a reassuring hand on his bare chest, both of them on the edge of sleep, Patrick felt safe and warm and held. He turned in David’s arms, and burrowed his head into his chest.

“David, can I tell you something?”

“Mmm, anything.” David’s voice was still gentle, and soft, and exactly what Patrick needed.

Patrick cleared his throat, wanting the words to come out right the first time he said them.

“I’m gay.”

David’s arms held him tighter, and Patrick breathed out in relief. Of course David understood. He’d prepared himself for a laugh or a scoff or a “yeah, all the sex we’ve been having for a year kind of gave the game away”. But of course David understood.

“I’m gay.”

It was easier the second time. The words felt right in his mouth.

David spoke with perfect sincerity, just above his left ear. “Thank you for telling me, Patrick.”

\---

Pushing aside that niggling voice accusing him of seeming far too keen, Patrick sought Ashanti’s eye across the bar at his second Games Night (‘classic’ two-player games), as everyone started pairing up. She grinned, nodded, and tucked a chessboard and bag of pieces beneath her arm.

They found a spare table up the back. As he followed along behind her, he couldn’t help but think of David who, were he there, would be elbowing Patrick’s ribs and gesturing approvingly at her ensemble: a cropped sparkly jumper, baggy black dungarees, rolled up at the cuffs, and a pair of chunky heeled boots. She looked gorgeous.

“Where’s Jess this week?”

“Oh, she’s got a meeting with her supervisor. Her PhD is still stuck in the tricky patch.”

Patrick grimaced sympathetically. A fortnight earlier, once Ashanti had, as promised, whipped his ass in Ticket to Ride, he’d had a drink with her and Jess. They’d talked about Rose Apothecary, and Jess’ modern philosophy PhD, and Ashanti’s sculpture class.

Ashanti and Patrick set up their pieces while doing a casual catch-up: their jobs, their partners, their weeks. I like her, Patrick thought. He felt a sudden rush of affection for her, for the way that she talked so easily, all the details she’d remembered from the fortnight previous. It was tentative, and new, but it felt good. Like the beginning of something.

Patrick captured a few of Ashanti’s pieces early, falling easily back into the game he hadn’t played since school, a kind of muscle memory taking over. Meanwhile, she told him about her parents, who were planning a visit from Vancouver, and who would be in Elmdale the following weekend.

“My parents,” he said, and then realised that Ashanti was going to be the first person that knew, “they don’t know.”

“Know?” she repeated.

“Know,” he said, “about me, I mean. About why it didn’t work with Rachel. About… about me being gay.”

It wasn’t quite like saying it to David, giving himself the label in public, but it helped that Ashanti didn’t seem to have noticed it wasn’t something he was used to saying.

Ashanti nodded, carefully, and then said, “you don’t think they’ll like David?”

Patrick started, because that wasn’t it at all. “No, they already do. I mean, they didn’t, at first. My mum Googled him which, honestly, is a terrible idea. I did, before we got together, and only got a page in before I decided I’d rather let him tell me what he wants me to know. But they did. They were really worried about my going into business with him. But that was a year ago. They like him now. They call the store occasionally, and they talk to him. He sent them a basket of our products last Christmas.”

He could tell he was rambling, and glanced down at the board in front of him, trying to work out whether he could return to the game without Ashanti asking any follow-up questions, unsure of why he’d let her in on this. Without really thinking about it, he moved his bishop across the board.

“Okay, so…?” Ashanti trailed off. She glanced down, and captured his bishop.

No avoiding it then.

“I just. I don’t want anything to change between us. I’m worried it will change things. I don’t want them to see me differently.”

Ashanti smiled, gently, and cocked her head to the side. “Yeah, I get that. But, I mean, hasn’t it already? You used to live in the small town you grew up in, engaged to someone they knew for over a decade. You probably saw them a lot, right?”

“Every week for dinner, and then often at the weekend.”

“Right. Every week. And now you live in a different town, and you haven’t seen your parents in over a year, and you’re actively not inviting them into your life. Things have changed between you. That is different, already.”

Patrick was silent.

“What does David think?”

Patrick gripped his hands together tighter between his knees.

“David doesn’t really ask about it.”

There was silence, and he felt Ashanti try to catch his eye.

“OK, and what does that mean?”

“He doesn’t know that I haven’t told them. I think he might assume they know by now. I mean, we haven’t talked about it.”

She let out a low whistle.

“Look, Patrick, I’m not going to tell you that you have to jump out of the closet and dance around in front of your parents in a sequined bolero. As much as I think you could probably pull it off. This is your coming out, and you need to do it in a way that makes sense to you. And of course I get not wanting to hurt your parents, and wanting to do it in person. But I do think that maybe you should talk to your boyfriend about the fact that you haven’t told them who he is to you?”

Patrick wanted to get up and walk away from the table. He wanted to tell Ashanti to fuck off and mind her own business, and to go home to David and take back the whole ‘I need other friends’ nonsense that had started this.

But he also knew that Ashanti was right. He needed to tell David.

“I know. I know. Look, tomorrow is my birthday, and I think he has some fancy dinner plans. He’s being really… cagey, so I have a feeling he might have made a real effort. I don’t want to ruin it. The day after tomorrow. I’ll tell him then.”

Ashanti shrugged. “It’s your call, man, really. I’m not telling you that you have to tell him anything. But I do think that if you do, he might get it? And he might be able to help you sort through it.”

Patrick nodded, slowly, and took a long drink from his bottle.

“At the very least,” Ashanti continued, “you won’t have to worry about him accidentally revealing to your mum something on the phone that he really shouldn’t know as your business partner.”

“Oh god, I know. Last month, he said something about how I always leave my dishes in the sink and how he’s better at washing up than I am, and I panicked and told her we put a kitchenette in at the store. She keeps asking for photos.”

Ashanti rolled her eyes and picked up her own bottle, taking a long swig. “I mean, yeah, like that. Stop putting yourself in situations where you’ve got to keep track of fake kitchenettes.”

Patrick couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face.

“That’s fair. That’s a fair piece of advice.”

Ashanti reached over, slowly and deliberately, and moved her rook.

“Checkmate.”


	2. A Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I think I really need to make a friend who is... someone who is like me.”
> 
> “A business major with an incomprehensible love of cheap polycotton and terrible belts?”
> 
> Patrick snorted. “Someone who hasn't spent the past couple of decades entirely aware of their sexuality.”
> 
> “Sure, sure. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
> 
> Or, Patrick decides it's about time he makes some new friends.
> 
> UPDATE: Now with PART TWO - A WEDDING
> 
> Patrick has made some new friends. Now he gets to hang out with them.
> 
> T/W: Very vague mention of the death by suicide of a character not actually in the story. A character discusses a previous panic attack, but everything is very much okay.

“So, I have some news.”

“Go on,” Ashanti said, looking up from her Scrabble tiles.

“I’m going to ask David to marry me,” he replied, unable to keep the grin from his face. She returned it, her smile cracking her focused face wide open.

“No way! Oh Patrick, man, that’s so great! When did you decide? How are you going to do it? I want to hear everything.”

She sat back into the sofa, her beer resting on her crossed knee, giving him her full attention. It was a lovely feeling, one he wasn’t entirely used to. He was still getting to know Ashanti, still getting used to having a friend who was just his that he could be himself with. Her focus was disarming. He liked it. A lot.

“I made the decision on my birthday.” He wondered whether he’d always be able to pinpoint the exact sequence of specific feelings that lead him to it. He hoped so. He kept reminding himself of them, to make sure of it. “Everyone had left and we were dancing. I realised that my parents knew - knew me and knew him - and I was overwhelmed by how well David knows me and takes care of me and how much I love him, and that I couldn’t imagine not doing so for the rest of my life. I was – I am – so certain and so sure that this is it. I’d known it for a while, I guess, but suddenly it was so clear. So easy.”

“Ugh, this is so romantic I might vomit. Hold that thought, it’s my round.” She shot up off the sofa, and ran through the mosaic of Scrabble groups set out across the bar, disappearing amongst the small crowd that had gathered by the bar. A minute later, she popped up again, the green scarf tied around her hair showing itself before the rest of her did, and cut an easy path back through the bar. She held his beer out and then flopped back down.

He accepted the bottle with a nod of thanks. “How did you and Jess get engaged?”

“No, no, no diversions. We’ll get to that, but I want to hear the rest of this first.”

“Ha. Okay. Well, once I knew it was _all_ sort of easy. I knew what rings to get, and then I asked his best friend for her blessing and she was snarky as hell but reckons I should ask him, and now I’m just waiting for the right moment to actually do it. Everything’s been a bit frantic lately, but we’ve got a day off together booked in a couple of weeks. I think I’ll ask him then. Take him somewhere nice, somewhere meaningful, and get down on one knee. The whole bit.”

“Have you talked about it?”

He paused, because it was far from the first time he’d considered that the proposal would come as a surprise. He’d proposed to Rachel after she’d spent a year dropping hints; it was the next natural step, the right thing to do. He’d never considered for a moment that she might not say yes. But with David, it felt like he would truly be _asking_. Was this a thing he might consider? Did this feel as right to him as it did to Patrick? Was marriage the next step, not in general, but for them specifically?

“We haven’t, not in any sort of explicit way. Honestly, if you’d asked me six months ago I would have said proposing would scare him off. I was happy just to be together without it. But lately? I don’t know, every now and then he’ll say something and I’ll realise we’re confidently making plans for five or ten years down the line – for the store, obviously, but for us too. The future thing doesn’t seem to spook him as much as it used to. And I realised, actually, once I started letting myself think about it properly, that I think he’d really love getting married. I can imagine him excited by the idea of a big to-do.”

“Big to-dos are the best. I love a to-do.”

“I didn’t think I did, but turns out that finding the right person to make a to-do with makes a real difference.”

Ashanti laughed heartily, bangles clattering as she took a swig from her bottle.

“And you?” he asked. “How did it happen with you and Jess?”

“Oh it was so impossibly low-key. We ended up talking about marriage and whether we had plans for children and where we wanted to live in the future on, like, date three? Classic queer women; _such_ a cliché. Anyway, a couple of years later, we were on the sofa one night and she just looked at me and said “we’re obviously getting married one day, right?” and I said “yeah, obviously” and then we were just… engaged?”

“Oh my god,” Patrick said in awe, unable to imagine it. Even when it had been inevitable with Rachel there had been a whole thing. “That’s so amazing.”

“It made things very easy. We went shopping for rings together. God, despite how low-key it was though, it was such an emotional few weeks.”

“Yeah? I mean, I’ve been feeling quite, I don’t know,” he paused, debating whether or not to share with her something he hadn’t told anyone else. “I cried in the car when I picked David’s rings up.”

“Yeah?” she asked, gently.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I don’t really cry much, honestly. Not really a thing that happens, you know? But I was sitting behind the wheel and I couldn’t pull out into traffic. I couldn’t see at all.”

“That makes sense,” she cocked her head sympathetically.

“It does?” he asked, slightly desperately.

“Well, yeah. I mean, quite aside from the fact that you nearly married someone you weren’t attracted to, that now you get to propose to someone who makes you really happy, it’s a big thing, isn’t it? Like, it’s only been possible for you and David to get married here since, what, 2005? That’s not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. I mean, we were functioning people then.”

“Well, I was eighteen, so I’m not sure functioning is right, but yeah.” He swallowed. “I guess, if I’d known this about myself at school, I would have spent all that time thinking that it… marriage, I mean, might not be in my future.”

“Exactly. It’s probably no bad thing to just give yourself a bit of time to take that in. Process it. It’s okay that it’s a lot. When Jess and I proposed to each other, we cried on and off for a week afterwards. In good ways but also, you know, for the ‘us’ of twenty years ago who couldn’t do what we were doing. And for the ‘us’ in other places in the world who still can’t. It’s complicated. It’s probably always going to be.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it like that. I should have, I guess.”

“There’s no should have. I’m not telling you it _has_ to be a big thing. I’m just saying it makes sense to me that it might be.”

He realised with a rush how lucky he was to have her, and felt himself getting choked up. “Thanks, Ashanti. I think I take our town for granted sometimes. Honestly, it’s just been a total non-issue. No one blinked when David and I got together. But you’re right.”

She nodded and left him to compose himself for a moment, feigning an interest in the board between them before effortlessly changing the subject. 

“Now obviously no pressure if you want to keep it secret, but can we return to the rings? Rings plural?”

He laughed, unutterably grateful for the opportunity to move on to something else.

“David wears these four silver rings every day. I love them; they were one of the first things I noticed about him.” He lost himself for a moment, thinking of those rings pressing into the side of his neck when they’d first kissed in his car, cool between his fingers when he held David’s hand in winter, grounding against his hip when they were in bed. “Anyway, I stole them one night when he was asleep and traced around them, found this independent jeweller online, and had a set made in gold.”

She whistled, low and impressed. 

“That’s gorgeous. He’s a really lucky guy.”

“I just,” he plowed ahead, realising the truth of the words as they left him. “I try to be worthy of him. That’s all I’m ever doing. He’s a really good person.”

Ashanti shot him an affectionate smile and a half shake of her head that he could tell might turn into a compliment he felt suddenly too delicate to receive. He returned his attention to the board, and as she put **bazaar** over a triple word score, she spoke again. 

“So, I have a proposition for you. My friend Lex’s partner Nell has been put on bed rest. She’s going to spend the next two months with a swollen belly and her feet up. But Lex isn’t keen to leave her, and so they can’t come to the wedding.”

“Oh, that’s such a shame,” Patrick said, feeling that slight visceral thrill at hearing the singular ‘they’, at Ashanti’s ease with it, at how good it felt to be in a space where it felt entirely unworthy of further comment or explanation.

“Yeah, I’m sad for Lex; we’d obviously love to have them there. That said, I’m just thrilled Nell’s been told unequivocally to take it easy. She was planning on working until her tenth contraction.”

“Wow.”

“Right? Nightmare. I can’t even imagine. Anyway, the proposition is: do you want to come to the wedding? Our wedding? With David too, obviously. It’s on a vineyard up towards Ottawa, and we’ve booked out the whole place, so there’s already a room for you for the weekend if you want it. The wedding is on the 20th but most people are staying from the 19th.”

“I mean, we’d love to, of course, but isn’t there…” he trailed off, searching for the right words. “I don’t know, someone else higher up the list? We only met a couple of months ago. And you’ve never met David.”

“Oh no, that’s why you’re perfect. The friends we’re closest to are already on the guest list. With any family or colleagues there’ll be some huge political back and forth. Why didn’t they make the first list when such-and-such did, blah blah blah,” she rolled her eyes, waving the very concept of some vague relatives aside with her hand as she spoke. “We can’t be bothered. You’re not going to be offended, because you literally didn’t know me or Jess when the invites went out.”

Patrick laughed. “True.”

“And, man, when you know, you know. You’re good people, Patrick Brewer. I have a feeling you’ll be around in our lives for a good long while. In five years we’ll want to look back and know you were at our wedding. So, come. We’d love it.”

Her surety took Patrick aback for a moment. He felt warm, and moved. “Thank you, Ashanti. That means a lot. I’ll talk to David but yes, obviously. We’d be thrilled.”

\---

It took David next to no time to acquiesce to a weekend at a vineyard, a queer weeding, and an open bar, especially once they’d talked Stevie into covering the store and keeping Alexis out of it (they couldn’t afford the written off stock) in exchange for a frankly indecent amount of wine. In a stroke of luck, Mrs Rose had been booked for some soap opera thing, a secret from the rest of the cast, but one Alexis couldn’t help blurting out to him after rehearsals the week previous. Regardless of the reason, they had the weekend off from Cabaret rehearsals, ostensibly to ‘rest their instruments’ before tech week. Everything had worked out more easily than Patrick could have hoped.

But first, between serving customers later that week, David had thoughts. He was reorganising stock, creating space for their new summer skincare range. As he polished glass and straightened lines, he started speaking as if the conversation was one they’d been having minutes, rather than days, previous.

“Look, I’ve been to enough weddings where I didn’t know the couple and it’s fine, obviously, but I’d prefer to be invested as soon as I see them arrive. I want to _feel_ it. I was there when Kate married Wills and literally did not shed a tear during the ceremony because I hadn’t met them properly yet because I was too hungover to make it to their spring pre-wedding garden party. And then later, at that rager in the ballroom in the Palace, when Harry was playing Bowie as part of his set, I was dancing with Kate after _finally_ having a chance to talk with her. I don’t know whether it was I Can’t Give Everything Away or Kate’s upper class establishment to actual royalty rags-to-riches tale or the molly I’d taken but suddenly I was crying? Dabbing at tasteful tears with a handkerchief during the ceremony is one thing, but ugly reception tears are incorrect. Anyway, I refuse to be put in that position again.”

“So you want to meet Ashanti and Jess beforehand?” Partick confirmed from his vantage point behind the cash register. 

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“Nope, but it might have been buried somewhere in there,” he teased, and David rolled his eyes. “Okay, so, let’s have a drink with them one night next week?”

“Sure, sure, we could do that.”

“Or…?”

“Or...” David said, hands moving with a practised nonchalance that Patrick recognised instantly for what it was.

“Or we could invite them around for a games night.”

“I mean, if you like. If that works. For what it’s worth, I think that’s a good idea,” David nodded, unable to keep the grin from creeping across his face as he unpacked another box of the body milk. “Really good.”

\---

“I have literally never, in my entire life, seen anyone draw a chicken that looks less like a chicken. And I’ve worked with abstract artists,” David burst out in frustration.

Jess snorted into her drink, turning pink as she tried to turn it into a polite cough. Ashanti’s shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.

The problem was, of course: they were an appallingly competitive games night pair, so much worse together than they were independently. It was a trait exposing enough to reveal in front of family, but in front of new friends it was excruciating. And they were never worse than when they were losing. Badly. 

“To be fair to Patrick though, it didn’t look much like the Burberry logo either,” Jess said, struggling to keep her voice even.

Patrick grinned at her, as David rose from the table in search of another bottle of wine. 

“I’m not sure we need to be _fair to Patrick_ here, actually,” he threw back over his shoulder.

 _I love him_ Ashanti mouthed at Patrick, and he blushed and tried to roll his eyes before giving up with a shrug and mouthing _me too_ back in her direction. 

“Sorry for bringing Pictionary,” Ashanti said in a voice loud enough for David to hear. “Didn’t realise it would be a controversial choice.”

“I imagine it’s the price I have to pay for falling in love with a business major and not an artist,” David said with a dramatic sigh, as he sat back down at the table, bottle in hand.

They all laughed, and David kissed his cheek, and Patrick thought that six months ago that sort of comment might have stirred something in him, a small panic that something was going wrong, that he wasn’t good enough or exciting enough for David. 

The laugh now was genuine. It felt good not to be worried about it anymore. To be so sure of them.

The evening had been a good one. He’d made lasagna the night previous, David had proposed making a salad that Patrick had eventually put together once the four of them were back in the apartment (“I curated it, that is basically _my_ salad!” he shouted from the sofa), and Ashanti and Jess had brought wine so delicious David had demanded to know where they found it (“We _have_ to be stocking this. How would we categorise local, anyway? I spent six months in France once, so Chablis is technically home.”). There was gelato in the freezer for after the game: fancy little tubs of coffee and hazelnut and zabaglione. 

The three of them had sat around getting to know each other while Patrick had put the finishing touches on dinner, and he had felt a rush of affection for all of them, overwhelmed at seeing these pieces of his life click together so neatly, so satisfyingly easily.

He’d enjoyed planning the housewarming party, at least until Ted kissed David and Alexis took her heels off and Stevie stirred the pot and the whole thing went downhill, but he realised that he’d been avoiding this more intimate sort of entertaining. He hadn’t been able to pinpoint why at the time, but he’d always dreaded people visiting the house he and Rachel had shared. He could identify it now: his tendency to gravitate towards neutral ground, where it was more difficult for anyone to scrutinise their lives together, where there were fewer pointed questions about the future use of the spare bedroom that filled him with a weight he couldn’t explain.

But tonight: the four of them squashed around his miniature dining table, he and David on folding chairs, the mess of a Pictionary game between them all, felt right. He wanted to show off, wanted Ashanti and Jess to see this space that was gradually becoming as much David’s as it was his. Wanted his friends to see the life he had chosen. Keen to visit the store, the girls had arrived just before closing, Jess gushing over the sea salt candles and Ashanti distracted by the cheese selection, as he and David went through an abbreviated version of their store clear up. He hadn’t been able to stop grinning; he’d felt proud, and pleased, seeing them fawn over the beautiful place he and David had built together. 

“Hold on, hold on,” Ashanti was saying, collecting discarded Pictionary cards, as David poured her another glass. “You worked with Colette Whiten? I did part of my dissertation on her _People Sculpture_.”

“Oh god, I have stories that would _blow your mind_. She’s… well… look, let’s have a drink sometime and I will dish.” David preened, as Jess rolled her eyes good naturedly at Patrick.

“ You realise we’ve lost them to this now, don’t you?” she laughed, and Patrick shrugged.

“I’m not going to pretend I didn’t see this coming.”

“Okay, okay,” Ashanti interrupted. “At this point the whole thing is pretty much a forgone conclusion, but Jess?”

“Oh yeah,” Jess said, throwing an arm around Ashanti’s shoulder, and relishing the smug smile she sent at David and Patrick. “We’d really like to win this game now, if it’s all the same to you two.”

David groaned, his head slowly descending towards the table.

\---

“I loved having them here tonight,” Patrick said, lowering himself onto David’s lap after waving Jess and Ashanti off and locking the door behind them. 

“I don’t love that you gave them the rest of that lasagne,” David started, his lips forming into a pout that was only half deliberate. 

“I’ll make you another one,” Patrick said, tracing his fingertips along David’s hairline. “They’re just so snowed under with wedding stuff. I wanted to make their lives easier this week.”

“You’re a good friend, Patrick Brewer,” David said, looking up at him, eyes impossibly soft, “and they are gorgeous and brilliant and don’t take any shit from you and I like them so much.”

Later, as they were washing up (he was washing up, David was perched on the kitchen counter, his tongue curling around a spoon as he finished the hazelnut gelato straight from the tub), Patrick found himself forming a thought that had been bouncing around in his head since his birthday. 

“David, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he began, uncomfortable about the admission that was to come, of what it said about him. He continued his methodical washing up, knowing each step that would follow: glasses, then cutlery, then plates, then rinsing, then new water before the lasagne dish. The steps helped. “I know, look, I know I haven’t always been entirely honest with you. I never lied, but that’s, I don’t know, that feels like a technicality. Like a thing I told myself to make it seem better.

He turned to catch David’s eye, hands still in the hot water.

“I know I haven’t been fair on you. I kept things to myself. More than once. I allowed you to make assumptions, and I hate that those assumptions hurt you.”

David opened his mouth to speak, but Patrick could tell that his intention was to excuse it; to wave aside the day of the surprise party as if it hadn’t asked an almost impossible amount of him. He couldn’t bear it. He shook his head and placed a sudsy hand over the ripped knee of David’s jeans, knowing that he needed to get this out. David nodded, willing Patrick to continue, and him not mentioning the detergent soaking through his jeans revealed to Patrick just how much he wanted to give him space to talk this out.

“I like feeling capable, David, like I know the answers.” 

He paused and took a breath, and David took the opportunity to reply. 

“Well, of course. I mean you’re almost annoyingly capable.” He checked things off on his fingers. “You got funding for the Apothecary and you know how to make lasagne and all about taxes and write-offs and you have a frustratingly gorgeous voice and you give really fucking superb blow jobs. You’re basically perfect.”

“I’m not perfect, David” Partick looked down into the sink, frustrated that he didn’t seem to be getting this. 

“Honey, I know that,” he said gently and slightly patronisingly, but not unkindly. “No one needs you to _actually_ be perfect. You don’t need to have all the answers. I just mean, I guess, that you’re perfect. For me.”

Patrick felt David’s words move through him, steeling him. He wanted to cry, but he wanted to finish this more. He turned to look at David.

“The thing is though, I used to think I had all the answers. I knew when to ask for a promotion at work, how to help a friend organise a move to Toronto, how to set up a CPP. I knew when to move in with Rachel, when to propose. I knew all the right answers. And then it all started to unravel and I left and it turns out that everything I was so sure about wasn’t true at all. I was so wrong about so many important things. And if I was wrong about those things, what if I’d been wrong about everything?” He blinked back tears, frustratedly. “What if I had been wrong about my parents?”

David hummed sympathetically, his eyes shining.

“I think I’m not used to feeling out of control, to letting someone in when I haven’t figured out the answers yet. But I need you to know that I’m trying to get better at this. I want to start asking for your help, to talk things through with you. I want you on my team.”

“Not with the baseball though, right? Because I think we both agreed…” David began, a smile at the corner of his mouth indicating that he knew he was being a brat. Patrick rolled his eyes.

“A metaphorical team, David. A you and me team.”

For one wild moment, the words almost burst out of him. 

_I’m always going to want you on my team._

_I want to marry you._

_I want you to be my husband._

Patrick swallowed them down. 

“So we don’t have to wear matching polyester?” He heard the joke in David’s tone, but also the very slight fear that Patrick would find a way to force him into a man-made fibre.

“We can wear literally anything you want. There are no uniforms.”

“Then yes.” David spoke suddenly with an unusual and perfect sincerity, with all traces of laughter and teasing gone, with exactly what Patrick needed. “I want that too. I want you to be my team.”

Hands still wet from the water, Patrick stepped between David’s legs, took the tub of gelato and spoon from his hands, and heard David’s sharp intake of breath. He tilted David’s head exactly where he wanted it, and then licked the protest he was expecting about his damp hands straight out of David’s mouth. David groaned, sending a shiver straight down Patrick’s spine. He moved his hands up along the insides of David’s thighs, pushing his legs first wider, and then pulling them tightly around his own waist. David gasped into his mouth as Patrick lifted, his hands sliding under David’s arse.

“ _Fuck_ , Patrick.”

They left the rest of the washing up soaking in the sink.

\---

In the end, they’d arrived at the winery too late to do much more than check in and hang their suits up for the next day. The sound of chatter and laughter floated in through their window; in the courtyard downstairs guests they would meet tomorrow were working their way through some of the products of the vineyards that sprawled out in each direction. 

Patrick stepped out of the bathroom, plans for spending the next morning in their deep tub already forming through his head. He looked over to the bed. David was dozing: breathing heavily, mouth soft, face glowing and still pink after his night routine, one arm folded up beneath his head. Something tugged behind Patrick’s solar plexus, a deep and affecting gratitude that he was allowed to see him this way, stripped of all archness and control and pretense, beautiful in his vulnerability.

He was overcome, as he so often was, by the surety that he was the only one who had ever seen this David, the David he was with no-one else. Stevie has her David, and Alexis has hers; Patrick knew that David had been more open and honest with them both in the past year than he had been with anyone in his old life. But this David was his alone. This David wanted to be on his team.

“Are you watching me sleep, you monster?”

“Yes,” Patrick admitted.

David opened his eyes and cocked an eyebrow.

“Wanna come over here and watch me not sleep instead?”

“Yes, please.”

Despite more than six months in his own place now, despite them no longer being as starved of privacy as they had been in those days at Ray’s, there was part of Patrick that he felt would probably always have a Pavlovian response to being in a hotel room with David. The thrill of a plastic key card, of a door that not one of the Roses or Stevie or Ray could enter without warning, did something visceral to him. He’d been turned on since they’d checked in.

It was a low, rumbling, sleepy sort of turned on; a long day at the store, a hasty dinner at the cafe, and a tricky winding drive in the dark meant that his body was crying out for sleep. So there was no urgency to the kisses he landed on David, no desperate need to get David naked. His hands moved slowly and surely, happy to slip beneath clothing as his feet tangled with David’s and his lips and teeth found the curve of his neck, the corner of his mouth, his brow, his bottom lip. David seemed to sense Patrick’s mood, as he had never yet failed to do in bed, and moved as though playing the best possible version of a game Patrick had first played in his drama classroom at school, a version he couldn’t have dreamed of when he’d first learned it. Yes, and his lips there. Yes, and a brush of a nipple. Yes, and a thigh between his. David took his time, a hand warm and weighty on the strip of skin exposed when Patrick’s sleep shirt worked its way up his back, languid scratches of his nails along Patrick’s hairline, focused attention on the shell of Patrick’s ear.

He loved this. The ease between them; the knowledge that they could fuck lazily or passionately or desperately or not at all, as the mood took them. That things could build, or they could just make out instead, falling asleep curled around each other. It was rare, that that was what he wanted; most of the sex they had wasn’t quite like this. But he loved that they had this too. The drive to employ his body in showing David just how much he loved him was so different to that old need to please, to prove something he kept telling himself was true. This instinct, this impulse, the visceral truth of loving David, still felt revolutionary.

Tonight, gradually, eventually, their lazy kissing continued until David rolled onto his back, hauling Patrick with him before speaking low and rumbling close to his ear. “What do you want, honey?”

“You,” he breathed back. “Everything. But, maybe tomorrow? Tonight, just like this?” He ground down against David with more purpose, more intent.

They lost their sleep shirts and then pants, rocking against each other, David’s voice catching and becoming increasingly desperate as he hooked a leg over Patrick’s hip and poured filth into his ear; all the ways they could take each other the next night.

 _Yes, and_ , Patrick thought, panting against David’s cheek. _Yes, and. Yes, and. Yes, and._

\---

The winery looked stunning beneath the cloudless sky; vines coiled on the trellis above their heads. Lines of folding chairs, more comfortable than they had any right to be, ran across the slightly rough and uneven ground. Guests were milling, finding chairs slowly, greeting each other with the sort of enthusiasm reserved for friends who weren’t in each other's company nearly often enough. 

David was dressed in something he’d never seen (David was always dressed in something he’d never seen): a dark grey suit and a white shirt that crept high up his throat. He’d been floored by it when David had walked out of their bathroom primped and ready to go an hour before; couldn’t stop his jaw from quite literally dropping. Unlike David’s jumpers, the suit followed his lines so precisely, cut and tucked to show off his shoulders, the dip of his waist, his thighs, the parts of him Patrick normally only properly saw in the privacy of a bedroom. It was simple but seemed (to Patrick’s increasingly educated eye) like it would have cost an amount that spoke to cars rather than suits. It was worth it, whatever it was. David looked breathtaking. 

Now out in the vineyard, David tucked close to his side, he couldn’t help wondering why they didn’t do this more often. Being in the cafe, in Schitt’s Creek, was one thing. But having David on his arm in a crowd of strangers, knowing that people saw them and knew they were together, sent a thrill through him. He wanted to make circles through the guests, pointing David out to everyone, making it clear just how lucky he knew he was. Though the words had only left his mouth relatively recently, and only then to a small, select audience, he found himself fighting a ridiculous urge to introduce himself to everyone with “I’m Patrick, I’m gay, and this is my boyfriend David”.

A message went through the crowd that the arrival of the brides was imminent and, promising to find Lorine and Kel (Ashanti’s Vancouver-based cousin and her husband, who they had latched onto early on) during the reception, Patrick led David to a couple of seats towards the back. The chattering quietened down, gradually, and then the opening chords of what Patrick recognised immediately as Mr. Blue Sky started playing. He grinned, then whipped his head around in search of Ashanti and Jess.

David’s height gave him an advantage; Patrick heard his sharp intake of breath and felt the grip on his elbow before they came into view. When he saw them, he knew instantly what David meant about the tears. He couldn’t help welling up. They were walking arm in arm up the centre aisle together, Ashanti in a white suit and towering heels, Jess with her hair down and a dress that seemed to float around her as she moved. There was something familiar about her that he couldn’t place; a feeling that he had seen this version of her before.

“She’s basically a Pre-Raphaelite, oh my god.” David’s breath tickled his ear and Patrick tried to slow his heart rate.

A Pre-Raphaelite, that was it. Ophelia drowned and surrounded by flowers; Rachel had had a print in her room at college. He had found himself constantly distracted by it, uncomfortable at the privacy and sadness and horror of a scene somehow so beautiful he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it.

“And that suit, my god, the tailoring. Fuck _me_.” David practically drooled.

“They both look incredible,” Patrick quietly agreed.

“Pansexuality,” David muttered, low enough that only Patrick would hear him, “is truly a rich and complex tapestry.”

Patrick turned to him and tried to control his laughter, because of _course_ David would pick this moment to quote that book at him. That line that he had put under a half-asleep Patrick’s nose with a shriek in the early hours of the morning months earlier.

“I have the sense, this being their actual wedding, that they’re both very much taken,” Patrick whispered, as they sat down again, and he tried to get his face under control. He looked over, at his boyfriend blinking away tears. He slipped his hand into David’s. “But I’m not going to pretend that I can’t appreciate what you mean.”

\---

“This song? At a wedding?”

“Let me guess. Incorrect?”

“Just… interesting,” David mused, spinning Patrick away and then pulling him back in. They’d been on the dance floor since dinner, David looking around frequently in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the cake. “Not necessarily the right message. Underrated classic though. Everyone talks about Dancing on My Own, but this is such a great track too.”

“Have I ever told you about the panic attack I had to this song?” The question had an almost breezy air to it, and the eyebrow that curved upwards told him David wasn’t fooled for a moment. He’d never told this story before. Of course David didn’t know.

“We’d been working together a month, I think. Maybe a week before the store opened. We were organising all the shelving in the back room and it came on your Spotify.”

David ran a comforting hand up Patrick’s back; warmth radiated outwards from his spine.

“And I looked over at you sort of shimmying away and singing along and we were laughing for a bit and then suddenly I couldn’t think of anything except just how much I’d been longing to kiss you. I remember it so well, it was this bit exactly.”

He squeezed David’s hand tighter and allowed Robyn to sing it for him. Allowed the music to make its way into him, felt the truth of it in his bones.

_Don't you tell her how I give you something_

_That you never even knew you missed_

_Don't you even try and explain_

_How it's so different when we kiss_

“Knowing I wanted to kiss you was one thing. I could almost handle that. It was overwhelming at first, but I was getting used to feeling it. Wanting it, wanting you. It felt terrifying, but so good.” He was lost in the memory for a moment, remembering the visceral need to touch David, the almost constant thrum of it under his skin. The way he ached for it. For him.

“But…” David prompted, tucking their clasped hands between their bodies, pulling Patrick closer to his chest.

“But I couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel. About calling _her_ and telling her why it hadn’t worked. How I hadn’t realised how this was supposed to feel. When I left, I had ended things. But she didn’t know why. Honestly, standing in her apartment as I was telling her the wedding wouldn’t happen, I wasn’t entirely sure why either. I just knew it wasn’t ever going to work between us.”

He looked up at David, keen that he not take this in the wrong way, that he not spiral.

“I want to be really clear, David. I didn’t leave Rachel because I met you. We were over long before you walked into Ray’s. But once I met you, I knew for certain why I couldn’t ever go back. I’d never felt like that before.”

_Call your girlfriend_

_It's time you had the talk_

_Give your reasons_

_Say it's not her fault_

_But you just met somebody new_

He tucked himself back under David’s chin and felt David nod reassuringly beside his head. He pressed his lips to the crisp fabric of David’s dress shirt, feeling his collarbone beneath his lips. After a beat he spoke close to David’s ear, comforted by the hand on his back, by the sandalwood and tobacco in David’s cologne, by his steady heart only just perceptible beneath their clasped hands.

“I can’t even remember what excuse I gave you, but I managed to get out the front door, and around to your mother’s garden. I couldn’t breathe, I was sweating, I was basically in tears. I just felt so…” he paused, searching for the right word. “So alone. I wasn’t out to anyone. I’d finally figured out what I wanted and I didn’t know how to tell anyone. I felt like a fourteen-year-old kid with this huge, secret, impossible crush. And I thought of having to tell Rachel, my parents, how wrong I’d been about myself for all those years. How many people I’d hurt because I couldn’t see it.”

David held him even closer, if such a thing were possible, and pressed a lingering kiss to his temple. Robyn had finished now; wedding guests around them were jumping about wildly and singing endearingly off-key to Carly Rae Jepsen, but Patrick pushed on, still safe in David’s arms in the middle of the dance floor.

“And I couldn’t stop thinking about the extreme likelihood of finally working up the courage to tell you how I felt and you gently letting me down and then just having to figure out how to work with you anyway. Remember when I thanked you in the car?”

“Of course.”

“I really meant that. I was so grateful. David, I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to put myself out there without knowing how you felt.”

“I mean, it took Stevie basically telling me point blank you were into me. I thought there was no chance that I was in any way your type. I’d very much made peace… I had!” David insisted, at what Patrick imagined was his expression of incredulous disbelief at the suggestion of David making peace with anything. “I’d made peace with being your colleague and your friend and having an impossibly large unrequited crush on you. But I wanted you. I wanted you to want me back.”

“I know that now. I am so happy to know that now. God, David, I was so on the back foot, so worried about being too new to it. About you not wanting some guy, some nervous kid basically, who’d never kissed a man before and…” Patrick’s mouth was moving without his permission now, all those secret fears he had had so early on adding to their story, filling in the spaces he and David rarely visited together.

“Okay, I’m going to stop you because you have literally never been ‘some guy’, or ‘some nervous kid’. Even when I thought you were as straight as your jeans, you were my friend, and my partner, and a gorgeous man to whom I was very much attracted. But also, I don’t think you fully realise what a fucking privilege it was.”

Patrick looked up, his eyes wide. He’d never heard this from David before. David spoke on, not meeting his eyes.

“That trust, the trust you put in me, that was not a thing I took lightly. No one had ever trusted me with something like that before. I liked that you were new to it. Not, like, in a delicate virgin kind of way, obviously. I mean, I thought we were still kind-of going slow that first night at Stevie’s? And that was… you were…” he glanced around at the people dancing closest to them, and then lowered his voice slightly. Patrick blushed in anticipation of what he was going to say, knowing exactly what part of that night David was thinking of. “Look, it was not at _all_ slow. It wasn’t that. I just mean I liked that you trusted me enough to let me see you. See you discover this part of yourself. I like it when you don’t have all the answers. Even early on, I liked it. When you’re not in control of everything. When we figure things out together. It was never a problem that you were new to this. It was an honour.”

“An _honour_?”

“Yeah, now that I have said that, I need to go and get us both a drink, because that much sincerity has made me sort of itchy all over.”

Patrick laughed, his eyes shining with affection. With love.

“Take your time, David. I’m not going anywhere.”

David tucked his smile into his cheek, that place where he held all the joy that was too big for him to feel out loud. His eyes shone.

“I can’t believe you almost made me cry at a reception.” He pressed his forehead to Patrick’s before whispering a final word. “Incorrect.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, then David squeezed Patrick’s shoulders, and wandered off in the direction of the bar.

As Patrick watched him go, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his dress trousers, knowing that his smile must be overtaking his face. He caught Ashanti’s eye and she sent him a wink across the room. He tuned into the wedding guests singing loudly and with effervescent joy and thought _yes_.

I really, really, really, really, really, _really_ like him.

He grinned wildly at the thought and winked back at Ashanti. 

He’s on my team.

He’s going to be my husband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter on an already completed story?!  
> In the midst of a global pandemic?!  
> Turns out it's been exactly six months since I first posted here.  
> And my goodness... what a six months it's been.
> 
> Thank you all so much for being so lovely about (what is now) Part One of this story. It was a true joy having your brilliant feedback, and your queer-adjacent support, and to be able to chat with you in the comments. 
> 
> Like literally everyone else in the world, I've found the past six months a bit of a rollercoaster - I spent twelve weeks entirely alone, started to resent Zoom, and am now working behind a screen and a shield mask and tentatively meeting friends outdoors.
> 
> In the stress of... everything, I guess, I very much vanished from the Discord - I'm so sorry for doing so after you'd all been so lovely and welcoming. 
> 
> All this to say - I went away, but last week, while driving around England for work, I started thinking about all the weddings my friends have cancelled this summer, and the idea for Part Two was born. 
> 
> And so... here it is (or there it was). I hope you've enjoyed!
> 
> So looking forward to catching up on some of the stories I missed when I was away, and hope you're all safe and well.
> 
> ps. The book David was quoting from was (obviously) Red, White & Royal Blue. The Robyn song is Call Your Girlfriend. Mr. Blue Sky was the song Russell T. Davies and his husband Andrew played at their wedding, and listening to him talk about it on Desert Island Discs made me weep, and you should do the same.


End file.
